Bulwark Takes - Trump Spending Freeze is Still Causing Major Problems

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Sam Stein and Huffington Post senior reporter Arthur Delaney discuss the funding freeze one week on and all the confusion.

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Next trip, share a house at Evermore Orlando Resort. You won't believe what you resorted to before. Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark. I'm here with the one, the only senior reporter. He made sure I said senior. For HuffPost, Arthur Delaney. Arthur is live in a phone booth, a phone booth uh at the u.s capital building uh because that's what he does just machine uh before we get into it arthur uh i

want to make sure people know subscribe to our feed it's vital there's nothing more important you can do in these times than to become a bulwark youtube subscriber. It's important. We are going to talk about Head Start. Arthur is up on the hill, but also has a long record of reporting on the social safety net and on Head Start in particular. The reason I had already on is because there's a lot of confusion right now

amidst this federal spending freeze that was apparently lifted but may not be lifted by Donald Trump. So, Arthur, before you get into your new reporting, set the stage for us. What's happened over the past couple days that's got us to this place where there is confusion over Head Start? So last week, the Office of Management and Budget sent this memo that said just no more grants. Pause all grants. And that was a big deal because that potentially touched on a wide range of programs, especially Head Start and also Meals on Wheels and heating assistance for people with low incomes. And the Trump administration did not like these headlines. They said, no, no, not those programs.

Right. Just the DEI ones. Right. This is only about DEI and woke gender ideology, which, okay, your memo did mention those words, but you did not specify a narrow subset of grants. You said all grants. And then they rescinded the memo. And it appeared to be a total climb down

but the press secretary insisted that the funding freeze was still on they only rescinded the memo to get around a court order and another federal judge said huh that's interesting I think I'm gonna put a second injunction right on this spending for you so they got slapped down by federal courts twice. They rescinded the funding freeze. Courts told them they couldn't do it anyway. And so I think we all figured that the money would be released. There had been early reports of recipients of some of these grants,

because these are programs that are administered through grants. Right. To be clear, that means that the government is not actually handling the programmatic elements of it's not out there in the head starts case running facilities to educate uh young often impoverished kids it is giving the money to people to do that right there's no federal Head Start daycare where the children go. And there's about 800,000 kids annually. So it's local nonprofits. And it's basically pre-kindergarten. I mean, they do other things as well. But that's the simplest way to think about

it. And so it turns out that there are still problems getting the money for some of these types of programs. What would the problems be? The courts have said you cannot do this. You have to spend the money. It is against the law to hold it up. What would the problems actually be here? So these organizations get approved for money annually, but they have to draw it down from a federal portal on a piecemeal basis as needed

where they explain what they're using it for, whatever it may be. And more than 40 Head Start providers across the country apparently are not able to use that portal as of Tuesday afternoon, a full week after we had all this drama about the memo and who was affected. And that number seems to be growing. I mean, that's just who has reported a problem to the National Head Start Association. That's who told me that this is such a widespread problem. There had been earlier reporting by Lisa Desjardins at PBS NewsHour

who talked to individual providers saying they were having this same trouble. So it's kind of a big problem affecting dozens of providers. Is this one of those situations where the administration, maybe deliberately or not, is being kind of cute with words in that the money's fine, it's out there in the portal, but we still have our communications block where you cannot communicate with grantees or the public about what you're doing, and therefore access to the portal might be prohibited. There's definitely something going on. I don't know if it's a deliberate effort by the administration. The Justice Department told federal agencies on Friday,

you must comply with these federal court-issued restraining orders that forbade us to do the funding freeze we wanted to do. And I know that agencies and sub-agencies received that guidance and it filtered all the way out to various non-profit groups that provide services to people. So it looks more like a mistake or an accident. But I did speak to one Meals on Wheels association in the state of Washington. Their director said, maybe it's a mistake.

It's not an innocent mistake, though. Project 2025 says just axe Head Start. Get rid of it. And the funding not being available is consistent with what they did say in the text of that original order. Well, I guess I'm expanding the scope here, but I've been talking to people in the science community, in the biomedical research community a bit, and the same situation, like

NSF, the National Science Foundation, on its own website says, hey, grants are available. Like, the courts have intervened, the money is there in the portal, you can apply for it, and so on and so forth. At the same time, you look at other entities, even in the NSF. They now have guidance. It's reported that certain words will get your grant't meeting, and that council meeting is critical for making sure that the grants that are awarded actually get approved. So, yes, in theory, the money is out there, but if this one little council can't meet to actually put its stamp on that grant, you're missing a critical step. And so it does seem like there is a number of ways in which you can, in theory,

shut down government spending without saying you're turning off government spending. Yeah, I think you could maybe say it's the move fast and break things ethos. Like there's a willful recklessness to the way they went about this. While we were talking, I just now received a word from a senior administration official who said that this is related to a technical processing issue.

So apparently a payment backlog and not policy, which doesn't surprise me, except that it's been going on for a week. Right. And so what's the real world implications for this? Some Head Start, obviously, they're going to, you know, draw down payments.

Are they running out of money? Are they closing shuttering facilities or are we not there yet? Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director of the National Head Start Association, told me he was aware of one provider that did halt services. There may have been a few others, but he wasn't able to confirm those. So it is having real world impact beyond, you know, we are all hyperventilating about it, which I'm sure they imagine, you know, the proponents of cutting spending are thrilled by that. Yeah, they like that. I also got to ask you, like, what's the mood on the Hill

among Democrats? I mean, we saw a pretty instantaneous outrage when the OMB memo came out and then it was rescinded. And then like five other insane things happened over the weekend. And they're running to USAID. And now they're like back and all these confirmations are happening. And like, is the attention just too scattered? Are things happening too fast for Democrats up there? Democrats are slower than the news cycle, but it's not too fast. I mean, there's a cumulative effect that has clearly had its impact,

and Democrats are getting more resistance. They're giving more resistance vibes than they were before. For instance, a Democratic senator from Delaware, the name is escaping me at the moment, Lisa Brunt Rochester said today. Newly elected Democratic senator. It's totally fine that you didn't have the name at the top of your tongue we haven't talked yet anyway you have to know her

on a first person basis clearly yes citing this this unilateral funding freeze and everything else hold on the better question is does she know your name probably not probably not my name is not on the directory here fair enough all right but he said, I'm not going to support any nominees. Nothing you say can convince me that you won't administer the government in anything except this reckless Trump way. And Brian Schatz is talking about putting a hold on all State Department nominees. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, says we're going to have some demands on that funding bill, which is next month. I mean, government shutdown is going to be a huge story pretty soon. Shutdown? Not even that.

Everyone, the new thing is they're going to hold the debt ceiling hostage when it comes up. I shouldn't say hostage. They're going to demand concessions to lift the debt ceiling. Right. And so Democrats, they are creating an environment where it's... They're not fucking around anymore about this. It used to be the Democrats were like, we will be the responsible party.

We will lift the debt limit. We're not going to tank the country. I've talked to Democrats all week about this. Not a single one is like, we're going to just do it. They're going to demand concessions. That's right. I think this is one newsletter this morning phrased it as it's a lot harder for Democrats to cooperate now. It's easy for Democrats to make demands because you're pushing things pretty far.

I mean, it's pretty unanimous, except if you ask Republicans, that this is constitutional crisis territory. Right. Which isn't surprising. I mean, the Trump administration's people have said that's what they want. They want to overstep authority and get a court to bless it after the fact and say that is what the Constitution says.

Yeah. Well, the problem is, in the interim, groups like Head Start don't have money. And here we are. Artie, thank you so much, man. It's just a fitting backdrop. You in a phone booth, like the Superman you are.

Appreciate your time. Stay in touch and keep us posted. Keep us on everything that happens with Head Start. We'll have you back on the show, okay?